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The economics of freedom
1. “There’s a shortage of clear thinking about hard problems.
Our universities produce precious little of it, but you can
find an abundant supply in the writings of Frédéric Bastiat,
the clearest, most sensible economist who ever wrote. Bastiat
can be understood by a Nobel Prize winner, a taxi driver, a
student, an entrepreneur . . . even a politician! Read this book
and get set for a life-changing experience.”
—Tom G. Palmer, author of
Realizing Freedom:
Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice
5. The Economics of Freedom
What Your Professors
Won’t Tell You
Selected Works of Frédéric Bastiat
Foreword by F.A. Hayek
Closing Essay by Tom G. Palmer
Students For Liberty
Jameson Books, Inc.
6. Published by Students For Liberty / Jameson Books, Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of the Foundation for Economic Education.
www.FEE.org
Edited by Clark Ruper
Copyediting by Hannah Mead and Charles King
Cover design by Valerie Crain
Book design by Cox-King Multimedia: www.ckmm.com
Bastiat translated by Seymour Cain
For information and other requests please write Students For Liberty, PO Box
17321, Arlington, VA 22216, or Jameson Books, Inc., 722 Columbus Street,
P.O. Box 738, Ottawa, Illinois 61350.
ISBN 978-0-89803-169-0
Printed in the United States of America
9. Introduction
The Economics of Freedom is a joint project of the Atlas Economic
Research Foundation and Students For Liberty. Like Atlas, we
at SFL believe that ideas know no borders. Our affiliates around
the world work to promote free and just societies. We are young
idealists who know that liberty is not only beautiful and inspiring, but that it works in practice. We, the youth, are taking up
the task of educating ourselves and our fellow students about the
great issues of freedom, justice, prosperity, and peace. We build
on foundations built by generations of thinkers, entrepreneurs,
activists, and scholars.
This movement is diverse. Our members speak many languages,
profess many religions, and come from many nations, but we are
united by our common principles: economic freedom to choose
how to provide for oneself, social freedom to choose how to live
one’s life, and intellectual and academic freedom. We believe that
freedom does not come in pieces, but rather that it is a single and
indivisible concept that must be defended at all times.
Why The Economics of Freedom? Because at present, fallacious
economic thought is being used to justify the steady erosion of
our freedoms. The examples are plentiful: “stimulus packages” that
pile debt on top of debt; increased military spending in the name
of “job creation”; foolish destruction of wealth (“cash for clunkers”) to benefit powerful industries; trade obstructions (quotas
and tariffs) that benefit the few at the expense of the many and
undermine international peace; phony “regulations” that do not
make things “regular,” but instead disrupt and disorder economies;
and confiscation, nationalization, and plunder. All are in vogue
among the political classes.
Our generation is not the first to be confronted by such fallacies. Frédéric Bastiat destroyed the very same economic fallacies
many generations ago. Bastiat was a nineteenth century French
political economist who dedicated the last years of his short life to
proving that government by its nature possesses neither the moral
ix
10. authority to intervene in our freedom nor the practical ability to
create prosperity through its intervention.
The Economics of Freedom presents some of Bastiat’s most important essays. They reveal a sharp mind systematically debunking
one fallacy after another and a moral conscience that recoiled from
violence and tyranny. To read and understand “What Is Seen and
What Is Not Seen” is to contemplate the world in a new light. It
is one of the most important essays ever written in economics. In
addition to Bastiat’s writings, this book includes two essays that
show the importance of Bastiat’s ideas and then update and apply
them to more contemporary issues.
The Foreword to Bastiat’s essays was written by the 1974 Nobel
Laureate in economic science, F.A. Hayek. Hayek was not only
a pioneer of economic thought who gained fame for his work
showing why socialism fails and how markets utilize dispersed
knowledge (see his essay on “The Use of Knowledge in Society,”
which is available online at www.econlib.org, and his Nobel lecture, which is available at NobelPrize.org). He was also a forceful
champion of liberty. The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944 in
England, has become a classic of political thought, as have The
Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation, and Liberty.
The concluding essay, “Twenty Myths about Markets” by Dr.
Tom G. Palmer, was first delivered in 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya, at
a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, the international society
that Hayek founded in 1947. Dr. Palmer is a senior fellow at the
Cato Institute and vice president of the Atlas Economic Research
Foundation, a worldwide network of think tanks. Palmer formulates, considers, and refutes the myths that pass for wisdom,
including even some “overly enthusiastic defenses” of markets that
misstate their nature.
The academy is, perhaps unsurprisingly, full of people who
think that they are smart enough to run the lives of others. They
are not. Hence the subtitle of this volume: “What Your Professors
Won’t Tell You.” While your teachers likely value freedom, they
too often overlook the broader implications of government
intervention, particularly in the economic sphere. Because they
overestimate their own intellectual powers, they ignore the
x
11. “unintended consequences” of intervention into the voluntary
interactions of others. Nor do they understand that the theories
they propound are too often deployed by special interests, which
are better at manipulating and abusing power than are university
professors. That is why we at Students For Liberty have taken
up this cause, because if we do not advocate liberty in all of its
forms, who will?
We believe that a free society demands respect for the freedom of
everyone to pursue his or her own goals and to trade ideas, goods,
and services on voluntarily agreed-to terms. When all enjoy equal
freedom and our interactions are voluntary, the result is not chaos,
but order; not poverty, but plenty; not conflict, but cooperation.
We hope this book has made it into the hands of a curious
student with an open mind. If you find the ideas of this book interesting, you can visit www.studentsforliberty.org to learn more
about the student movement for liberty and join the fight for a
free academy and a free society.
xi
12.
13. Foreword
by F.A. Hayek
Even those who may question the eminence of Frédéric Bastiat as
an economic theorist will grant that he was a publicist of genius.
Joseph Schumpeter calls him “the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived.” For the purpose of introducing the present
volume, which contains some of the most successful of his writings
for the general public, we might well leave it at that. One might
even grant Schumpeter’s harsh assessment of Bastiat that “he was
not a theorist” without seriously diminishing his stature. It is true
that when, at the end of his extremely short career as a writer, he
attempted to provide a theoretical justification for his general conceptions, he did not satisfy the professionals. It would indeed have
been a miracle if a man who, after only five years as a regular writer
on public affairs, attempted in a few months, and with a mortal
illness rapidly closing in on him, to defend the points on which he
differed from established doctrine, had fully succeeded in this too.
Yet one may ask whether it was not only his early death at the age
of forty-nine that prevented him. His polemical writings, which
in consequence are the most important ones he has left, certainly
prove that he had an insight into what was significant and a gift
for going to the heart of the matter that would have provided him
with ample material for real contributions to science.
Nothing illustrates this better than the celebrated title of the
first essay in the present volume. “What is seen and what is not
seen in political economy!” No one has ever stated more clearly in
a single phrase the central difficulty of a rational economic policy
and, I would like to add, the decisive argument for economic freedom. It is the idea compressed into these few words that made me
use the word “genius” in the opening sentence. It is indeed a text
around which one might expound a whole system of libertarian
economic policy. And though it constitutes the title for only the
first essay in this volume, it provides the leading idea for all. Bastiat
illustrates its meaning over and over again in refuting the current
xiii
14. fallacies of his time. I shall later indicate that, though the views he
combats are today usually advanced only in a more sophisticated
guise, they have basically not changed very much since Bastiat’s
time. But first I want to say a few words about the more general
significance of his central idea.
This is simply that if we judge measures of economic policy
solely by their immediate and concretely foreseeable effects, we
shall not only not achieve a viable order but shall be certain
progressively to extinguish freedom and thereby prevent more
good than our measures will produce. Freedom is important in
order that all the different individuals can make full use of the
particular circumstances of which only they know. We therefore
never know what beneficial actions we prevent if we restrict their
freedom to serve their fellows in whatever manner they wish. All
acts of interference, however, amount to such restrictions. They
are, of course, always undertaken to achieve some definite objective.
Against the foreseen direct results of such actions of government
we shall in each individual case be able to balance only the mere
probability that some unknown but beneficial actions by some
individuals will be prevented. In consequence, if such decisions
are made from case to case and not governed by an attachment to
freedom as a general principle, freedom is bound to lose in almost
every case. Bastiat was indeed right in treating freedom of choice
as a moral principle that must never be sacrificed to considerations
of expediency; because there is perhaps no aspect of freedom that
would not be abolished if it were to be respected only where the
concrete damage caused by its abolition can be pointed out.
Bastiat directed his arguments against certain ever-recurring fallacies as they were employed in his time. Few people would employ
them today quite as naively as it was still possible to do then. But let
the reader not deceive himself that these same fallacies no longer
play an important role in contemporary economic discussion:
they are today expressed merely in a more sophisticated form and
are therefore more difficult to detect. The reader who has learnt
to recognize these stock fallacies in their simpler manifestations
will at least be on his guard when he finds the same conclusions
derived from what appears to be a more scientific argument. It
is characteristic of much of recent economics that by ever new
xiv
15. arguments it has tried to vindicate those very prejudices which
are so attractive because the maxims that follow from them are
so pleasant or convenient: spending is a good thing, and saving is
bad; waste benefits and economy harms the mass of the people;
money will do more good in the hands of the government than
in those of the people; it is the duty of government to see that
everybody gets what he deserves; etc., etc.
None of these ideas has lost any of its power in our time. The
only difference is that Bastiat, in combating them, was on the
whole fighting on the side of the professional economists against
popular beliefs exploited by interested parties, while similar proposals are today propagated by an influential school of economists
in a most impressive and, to the layman, largely unintelligible garb.
It is doubtful whether there is one among the fallacies which one
might have hoped Bastiat had killed once and for all that has not
experienced its resurrection. I shall give only one example. To an
account of Bastiat’s best-known economic fable, The Petition of
the Candlemakers against the Competition of the Sun, in which
it is demanded that windows should be prohibited because of the
benefit which the prosperity of the candlemakers would confer
on everyone else, a well-known French textbook of the history
of economics adds in its latest edition the following footnote: “It
should be noted that according to Keynes—on the assumption
of underemployment and in accordance with the theory of the
multiplier—this argument of the candlemakers is literally and
fully valid.”
The attentive reader will notice that, while Bastiat grapples with
so many economic panaceas which are familiar to us, one of the
main dangers of our time does not appear in his pages. Though
he has to deal with various queer proposals for using credit which
were current in his time, straight inflation through a government
deficit seemed in his age not a major danger. An increase of expenditure means for him necessarily and immediately an increase in
taxation. The reason is that, as among all people who have gone
through a major inflation within living memory, a continuous
depreciation of money was not a thing with which people would
have put up with in his day. So if the reader should be inclined to
feel superior to the rather simple fallacies that Bastiat often finds
xv
16. it necessary to refute, he should remember that in some other
respects his compatriots of more than a hundred years ago were
considerably wiser than our generation.
F.A. Hayek
xvi
17. What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen
by Frédéric Bastiat
In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects,
the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its
cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they
are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a
good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect;
the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be
seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
Yet this difference is tremendous, for it almost always happens
that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the
bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed
by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great
good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.
The same thing, of course, is true of health and morals. Often,
the sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later
fruits: for example, debauchery, sloth, prodigality. When a man
is impressed by the effect that is seen and has not yet learned to
discern the effects that are not seen, he indulges in deplorable
habits, not only through natural inclination, but deliberately.
This explains man’s necessarily painful evolution. Ignorance
surrounds him at his cradle; therefore, he regulates his acts according to their first consequences, the only ones that, in his
infancy, he can see. It is only after a long time that he learns to take
account of the others. Two very different masters teach him this
lesson: experience and foresight. Experience teaches efficaciously
but brutally. It instructs us in all the effects of an act by making
us feel them, and we cannot fail to learn eventually, from having
been burned ourselves, that fire burns. I should prefer, insofar
as possible, to replace this rude teacher with one more gentle:
foresight. For that reason I shall investigate the consequences of
1
18. several economic phenomena, contrasting those that are seen with
those that are not seen.
1. The Broken Window
Have you ever been witness to the fury of that solid citizen, James
Goodfellow, when his incorrigible son has happened to break a
pane of glass? If you have been present at this spectacle, certainly
you must also have observed that the onlookers, even if there
are as many as thirty of them, seem with one accord to offer the
unfortunate owner the selfsame consolation: “It’s an ill wind
that blows nobody some good. Such accidents keep industry going. Everybody has to make a living. What would become of the
glaziers if no one ever broke a window?”
Now, this formula of condolence contains a whole theory that
it is a good idea for us to expose, flagrante delicto, in this very
simple case, since it is exactly the same as that which, unfortunately,
underlies most of our economic institutions.
Suppose that it will cost six francs to repair the damage. If you
mean that the accident gives six francs’ worth of encouragement
to the aforesaid industry, I agree. I do not contest it in any way;
your reasoning is correct. The glazier will come, do his job, receive
six francs, congratulate himself, and bless in his heart the careless
child. That is what is seen.
But if, by way of deduction, you conclude, as happens only too
often, that it is good to break windows, that it helps to circulate
money, that it results in encouraging industry in general, I am
obliged to cry out: That will never do! Your theory stops at what
is seen. It does not take account of what is not seen.
It is not seen that, since our citizen has spent six francs for one
thing, he will not be able to spend them for another. It is not seen
that if he had not had a windowpane to replace, he would have
replaced, for example, his worn-out shoes or added another book
to his library. In brief, he would have put his six francs to some
use or other for which he will not now have them.
Let us next consider industry in general. The window having
been broken, the glass industry gets six francs’ worth of encouragement; that is what is seen.
2
19. If the window had not been broken, the shoe industry (or some
other) would have received six francs’ worth of encouragement;
that is what is not seen.
And if we were to take into consideration what is not seen, because it is a negative factor, as well as what is seen, because it is a
positive factor, we should understand that there is no benefit to
industry in general or to national employment as a whole, whether
windows are broken or not broken.
Now let us consider James Goodfellow.
On the first hypothesis, that of the broken window, he spends
six francs and has, neither more nor less than before, the enjoyment of one window.
On the second, that in which the accident did not happen, he
would have spent six francs for new shoes and would have had the
enjoyment of a pair of shoes as well as of a window.
Now, if James Goodfellow is part of society, we must conclude
that society, considering its labors and its enjoyments, has lost the
value of the broken window.
From which, by generalizing, we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: “Society loses the value of objects unnecessarily destroyed,”
and at this aphorism, which will make the hair of the protectionists stand on end: “To break, to destroy, to dissipate is not to
encourage national employment,” or more briefly: “Destruction
is not profitable.”
What will the Moniteur industriel say to this, or the disciples
of the estimable M. de Saint-Chamans, who has calculated with
such precision what industry would gain from the burning of Paris,
because of the houses that would have to be rebuilt?
I am sorry to upset his ingenious calculations, especially since
their spirit has passed into our legislation. But I beg him to begin
them again, entering what is not seen in the ledger beside what
is seen.
The reader must apply himself to observe that there are not only
two people, but three, in the little drama that I have presented.
The one, James Goodfellow, represents the consumer, reduced by
destruction to one enjoyment instead of two. The other, under
the figure of the glazier, shows us the producer whose industry
the accident encourages. The third is the shoemaker (or any other
3
20. manufacturer) whose industry is correspondingly discouraged by
the same cause. It is this third person who is always in the shadow,
and who, personifying what is not seen, is an essential element of the
problem. It is he who makes us understand how absurd it is to see a
profit in destruction. It is he who will soon teach us that it is equally
absurd to see a profit in trade restriction, which is, after all, nothing
more nor less than partial destruction. So, if you get to the bottom
of all the arguments advanced in favor of restrictionist measures,
you will find only a paraphrase of that common cliché: “What
would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke any windows?”
2. The Demobilization
A nation is in the same case as a man. When a man wishes to give
himself a satisfaction, he has to see whether it is worth what it costs.
For a nation, security is the greatest of blessings. If, to acquire it, a
hundred thousand men must be mobilized, and a hundred million
francs spent, I have nothing to say. It is an enjoyment bought at
the price of a sacrifice.
Let there be no misunderstanding, then, about the point I wish
to make in what I have to say on this subject.
A legislator proposes to discharge a hundred thousand men,
which will relieve the taxpayers of a hundred million francs in
taxes.
Suppose we confine ourselves to replying to him: “These one
hundred thousand men and these one hundred million francs are
indispensable to our national security. It is a sacrifice; but without
this sacrifice France would be torn by internal factions or invaded
from without.” I have no objection here to this argument, which
may be true or false as the case may be, but which theoretically
does not constitute any economic heresy. The heresy begins when
the sacrifice itself is represented as an advantage, because it brings
profit to someone.
Now, if I am not mistaken, no sooner will the author of the
proposal have descended from the platform, than an orator will
rush up and say:
“Discharge a hundred thousand men! What are you thinking
of ? What will become of them? What will they live on? On their
4
21. earnings? But do you not know that there is unemployment everywhere? That all occupations are oversupplied? Do you wish
to throw them on the market to increase the competition and to
depress wage rates? Just at the moment when it is difficult to earn
a meager living, is it not fortunate that the state is giving bread to
a hundred thousand individuals? Consider further that the army
consumes wine, clothes, and weapons, that it thus spreads business
to the factories and the garrison towns, and that it is nothing less
than a godsend to its innumerable suppliers. Do you not tremble at
the idea of bringing this immense industrial activity to an end?”
This speech, we see, concludes in favor of maintaining a hundred thousand soldiers, not because of the nation’s need for the
services rendered by the army, but for economic reasons. It is these
considerations alone that I propose to refute.
A hundred thousand men, costing the taxpayers a hundred
million francs, live as well and provide as good a living for their
suppliers as a hundred million francs will allow; that is what is
seen.
But a hundred million francs, coming from the pockets of the
taxpayers, ceases to provide a living for these taxpayers and their
suppliers, to the extent of a hundred million francs; that is what
is not seen. Calculate, figure, and tell me where there is any profit
for the mass of the people.
I will, for my part, tell you where the loss is, and to simplify
things, instead of speaking of a hundred thousand men and a
hundred million francs, let us talk about one man and a thousand
francs.
Here we are in the village of A. The recruiters make the rounds
and muster one man. The tax collectors make their rounds also
and raise a thousand francs. The man and the sum are transported
to Metz, the one destined to keep the other alive for a year without doing anything. If you look only at Metz, yes, you are right
a hundred times; the procedure is very advantageous. But if you
turn your eyes to the village of A, you will judge otherwise, for,
unless you are blind, you will see that this village has lost a laborer
and the thousand francs that would remunerate his labor, and the
business which, through the spending of these thousand francs,
he would spread about him.
5
22. At first glance it seems as if the loss is compensated. What took
place at the village now takes place at Metz, and that is all there is to
it. But here is where the loss is. In the village a man dug and labored:
he was a worker; at Metz he goes through “Right dress!” and “Left
dress!”: he is a soldier. The money involved and its circulation are
the same in both cases: but in one there were three hundred days
of productive labor; in the other there are three hundreds days of
unproductive labor, on the supposition, of course, that a part of
the army is not indispensable to public security.
Now comes demobilization. You point out to me a surplus of
a hundred thousand workers, intensified competition and the
pressure that it exerts on wage rates. That is what you see.
But here is what you do not see. You do not see that to send
home a hundred thousand soldiers is not to do away with a hundred million francs, but to return that money to the taxpayers.
You do not see that to throw a hundred thousand workers on the
market in this way is to throw in at the same time the hundred
million francs destined to pay for their labor; that, as a consequence, the same measure that increases the supply of workers also
increases the demand; from which it follows that your lowering
of wages is illusory. You do not see that before, as well as after, the
demobilization there are a hundred million francs corresponding
to the hundred thousand men; that the whole difference consists
in this: that before, the country gives the hundred million francs
to the hundred thousand men for doing nothing; afterwards, it
gives them the money for working. Finally, you do not see that
when a taxpayer gives his money, whether to a soldier in exchange
for nothing or to a worker in exchange for something, all the more
remote consequences of the circulation of this money are the
same in both cases: only, in the second case the taxpayer receives
something; in the first he receives nothing. Result: a dead loss
for the nation.
The sophism that I am attacking here cannot withstand the test
of extended application, which is the touchstone of all theoretical principles. If, all things considered, there is a national profit
in increasing the size of the army, why not call the whole male
population of the country to the colors?
6
23. 3. Taxes
Have you ever heard anyone say: “Taxes are the best investment;
they are a life-giving dew. See how many families they keep alive,
and follow in imagination their indirect effects on industry; they
are infinite, as extensive as life itself.”
To combat this doctrine, I am obliged to repeat the preceding
refutation. Political economy knows very well that its arguments
are not diverting enough for anyone to say about them: Repetita
placent; repetition pleases. So, like Basile, political economy has
“arranged” the proverb for its own use, quite convinced that, from
its mouth, Repetita docent; repetition teaches.
The advantages that government officials enjoy in drawing their
salaries are what is seen. The benefits that result for their suppliers
are also what is seen. They are right under your nose.
But the disadvantage that the taxpayers try to free themselves
from is what is not seen, and the distress that results from it for
the merchants who supply them is something further that is not
seen, although it should stand out plainly enough to be seen
intellectually.
When a government official spends on his own behalf one
hundred sous more, this implies that a taxpayer spends on his own
behalf one hundred sous the less. But the spending of the government official is seen, because it is done; while that of the taxpayer
is not seen, because—alas!—he is prevented from doing it.
You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to
a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where
this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that
draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up.
You should ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of
this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?
What is quite certain is that, when James Goodfellow counts out
a hundred sous to the tax collector, he receives nothing in return.
When, then, a government official, in spending these hundred
sous, returns them to James Goodfellow, it is for an equivalent
value in wheat or in labor. The final result is a loss of five francs
for James Goodfellow.
7
24. It is quite true that often, nearly always if you will, the government official renders an equivalent service to James Goodfellow.
In this case there is no loss on either side; there is only an exchange.
Therefore, my argument is not in any way concerned with useful
functions. I say this: If you wish to create a government office,
prove its usefulness. Demonstrate that to James Goodfellow it is
worth the equivalent of what it costs him by virtue of the services
it renders him. But apart from this intrinsic utility, do not cite, as
an argument in favor of opening the new bureau, the advantage
that it constitutes for the bureaucrat, his family, and those who
supply his needs; do not allege that it encourages employment.
When James Goodfellow gives a hundred sous to a government
official for a really useful service, this is exactly the same as when he
gives a hundred sous to a shoemaker for a pair of shoes. It is a case of
give-and-take, and the score is even. But when James Goodfellow
hands over a hundred sous to a government official to receive no
service for it or even to be subjected to inconveniences, it is as if
he were to give his money to a thief. It serves no purpose to say
that the official will spend these hundred sous for the great profit
of our national industry; the more the thief can do with them, the
more James Goodfellow could have done with them if he had not
met on his way either the extralegal or the legal parasite.
Let us accustom ourselves, then, not to judge things solely by
what is seen, but rather by what is not seen.
Last year I was on the Finance Committee, for in the Constituent Assembly the members of the opposition were not
systematically excluded from all committees. In this the framers
of the Constitution acted wisely. We have heard M. Thiers say:
“I have spent my life fighting men of the legitimist party and of
the clerical party. Since, in the face of a common danger, I have
come to know them and we have had heart-to-heart talks, I see
that they are not the monsters I had imagined.”
Yes, enmities become exaggerated and hatreds are intensified
between parties that do not mingle; and if the majority would allow a few members of the minority to penetrate into the circles of
the committees, perhaps it would be recognized on both sides that
their ideas are not so far apart, and above all that their intentions
are not so perverse, as supposed.
8
25. However that may be, last year I was on the Finance Committee.
Each time that one of our colleagues spoke of fixing at a moderate figure the salaries of the President of the Republic, of cabinet
ministers, and of ambassadors, he would be told:
“For the good of the service, we must surround certain offices
with an aura of prestige and dignity. That is the way to attract to
them men of merit. Innumerable unfortunate people turn to the
President of the Republic, and he would be in a painful position
if he were always forced to refuse them help. A certain amount of
ostentation in the ministerial and diplomatic salons is part of the
machinery of constitutional governments, etc., etc.”
Whether or not such arguments can be controverted, they
certainly deserve serious scrutiny. They are based on the public
interest, rightly or wrongly estimated; and, personally, I can make
more of a case for them than many of our Catos, moved by a narrow spirit of niggardliness or jealousy.
But what shocks my economist’s conscience, what makes me
blush for the intellectual renown of my country, is when they go
on from these arguments (as they never fail to do) to this absurd
banality (always favorably received):
“Besides, the luxury of high officials of the government encourages the arts, industry, and employment. The Chief of State and
his ministers cannot give banquets and parties without infusing
life into all the veins of the body politic. To reduce their salaries
would be to starve industry in Paris and, at the same time, throughout the nation.”
For heaven’s sake, gentlemen, at least respect arithmetic, and
do not come before the National Assembly of France and say, for
fear that, to its shame, it will not support you, that an addition
gives a different sum depending upon whether it is added from
top to bottom or from bottom to top.
Well, then, suppose I arrange to have a navvy dig me a ditch
in my field for the sum of a hundred sous. Just as I conclude this
agreement, the tax collector takes my hundred sous from me and
has them passed on to the Minister of the Interior. My contract
is broken, but the Minister will add another dish at his dinner.
On what basis do you dare to affirm that this official expenditure
is an addition to the national industry? Do you not see that it is
9
26. only a simple transfer of consumption and of labor? A cabinet
minister has his table more lavishly set, it is true; but a farmer
has his field less well drained, and this is just as true. A Parisian
caterer has gained a hundred sous, I grant you; but grant me that
a provincial ditchdigger has lost five francs. All that one can say is
that the official dish and the satisfied caterer are what is seen; the
swampy field and the excavator out of work are what is not seen.
Good Lord! What a lot of trouble to prove in political economy
that two and two make four; and if you succeed in doing so, people
cry, “It is so clear that it is boring.” Then they vote as if you had
never proved anything at all.
4. Theaters and Fine Arts
Should the state subsidize the arts?
There is certainly a great deal to say on this subject pro and
con.
In favor of the system of subsidies, one can say that the arts
broaden, elevate, and poetize the soul of a nation; that they draw
it away from material preoccupations, giving it a feeling for the
beautiful, and thus react favorably on its manners, its customs, its
morals, and even on its industry. One can ask where music would
be in France without the Théâtre-Italien and the Conservatory;
dramatic art without the Théâtre-Français; painting and sculpture
without our collections and our museums. One can go further
and ask whether, without the centralization and consequently
the subsidizing of the fine arts, there would have developed that
exquisite taste which is the noble endowment of French labor and
sends its products out over the whole world. In the presence of such
results would it not be the height of imprudence to renounce this
moderate assessment on all the citizens, which, in the last analysis,
is what has achieved for them their pre-eminence and their glory
in the eyes of Europe?
To these reasons and many others, whose power I do not contest, one can oppose many no less cogent. There is, first of all,
one could say, a question of distributive justice. Do the rights of
the legislator go so far as to allow him to dip into the wages of
the artisan in order to supplement the profits of the artist? M. de
10
27. Lamartine said: “If you take away the subsidy of a theater, where
are you going to stop on this path, and will you not be logically
required to do away with your university faculties, your museums,
your institutes, your libraries?” One could reply: If you wish to
subsidize all that is good and useful, where are you going to stop
on that path, and will you not logically be required to set up a civil
list for agriculture, industry, commerce, welfare, and education?
Furthermore, is it certain that subsidies favor the progress of the
arts? It is a question that is far from being resolved, and we see
with our own eyes that the theaters that prosper are those that live
on their own profits. Finally, proceeding to higher considerations,
one may observe that needs and desires give rise to one another and
keep soaring into regions more and more rarefied in proportion
as the national wealth permits their satisfaction; that the government must not meddle in this process, since, whatever may be
currently the amount of the national wealth, it cannot stimulate
luxury industries by taxation without harming essential industries,
thus reversing the natural advance of civilization. One may also
point out that this artificial dislocation of wants, tastes, labor, and
population places nations in a precarious and dangerous situation,
leaving them without a solid base.
These are some of the reasons alleged by the adversaries of state
intervention concerning the order in which citizens believe they
should satisfy their needs and their desires, and thus direct their
activity. I confess that I am one of those who think that the choice,
the impulse, should come from below, not from above, from the
citizens, not from the legislator; and the contrary doctrine seems
to me to lead to the annihilation of liberty and of human dignity.
But, by an inference as false as it is unjust, do you know what
the economists are now accused of ? When we oppose subsidies,
we are charged with opposing the very thing that it was proposed
to subsidize and of being the enemies of all kinds of activity, because we want these activities to be voluntary and to seek their
proper reward in themselves. Thus, if we ask that the state not
intervene, by taxation, in religious matters, we are atheists. If we
ask that the state not intervene, by taxation, in education, then
we hate enlightenment. If we say that the state should not give, by
taxation, an artificial value to land or to some branch of industry,
11
28. then we are the enemies of property and of labor. If we think that
the state should not subsidize artists, we are barbarians who judge
the arts useless.
I protest with all my power against these inferences. Far from
entertaining the absurd thought of abolishing religion, education,
property, labor, and the arts when we ask the state to protect the
free development of all these types of human activity without
keeping them on the payroll at one another’s expense, we believe,
on the contrary, that all these vital forces of society should develop
harmoniously under the influence of liberty and that none of them
should become, as we see has happened today, a source of trouble,
abuses, tyranny, and disorder.
Our adversaries believe that an activity that is neither subsidized
nor regulated is abolished. We believe the contrary. Their faith
is in the legislator, not in mankind. Ours is in mankind, not in
the legislator.
Thus, M. de Lamartine said: “On the basis of this principle, we
should have to abolish the public expositions that bring wealth
and honor to this country.”
I reply to M. de Lamartine: From your point of view, not to
subsidize is to abolish, because, proceeding from the premise that
nothing exists except by the will of the state, you conclude that
nothing lives that taxes do not keep alive. But I turn against you
the example that you have chosen, and I point out to you that
the greatest, the noblest, of all expositions, the one based on the
most liberal, the most universal conception, and I can even use
the word “humanitarian,” which is not here exaggerated, is the
exposition now being prepared in London, the only one in which
no government meddles and which no tax supports.
Returning to the fine arts, one can, I repeat, allege weighty
reasons for and against the system of subsidization. The reader
understands that, in accordance with the special purpose of this
essay, I have no need either to set forth these reasons or to decide
between them.
But M. de Lamartine has advanced one argument that I cannot
pass over in silence, for it falls within the very carefully defined
limits of this economic study. He has said:
12
29. The economic question in the matter of theaters can be
summed up in one word: employment. The nature of the
employment matters little; it is of a kind just as productive and
fertile as any other kind. The theaters, as you know, support
by wages no less than eighty thousand workers of all kinds—
painters, masons, decorators, costumers, architects, etc., who
are the very life and industry of many quarters of this capital,
and they should have this claim upon your sympathies!
Your sympathies? Translate: your subsidies.
And further on:
The pleasures of Paris provide employment and consumers’
goods for the provincial departments, and the luxuries of the
rich are the wages and the bread of two hundred thousand
workers of all kinds, living on the complex industry of the
theaters throughout the Republic, and receiving from these
noble pleasures, which make France illustrious, their own
livelihood and the means of providing the necessities of life
for their families and their children. It is to them that you
give these sixty thousand francs. [Very good! Very good! Much
applause.]
For my part, I am forced to say: Very bad! Very bad! confining,
of course, the burden of this judgment to the economic argument
which we are here concerned with.
Yes, it is, at least in part, to the workers in the theaters that the
sixty thousand francs in question will go. A few scraps might well
get lost on the way. If one scrutinized the matter closely, one might
even discover that most of the pie will find its way elsewhere. The
workers will be fortunate if there are a few crumbs left for them!
But I should like to assume that the entire subsidy will go to the
painters, decorators, costumers, hairdressers, etc. That is what is
seen.
But where does it come from? This is the other side of the coin,
just as important to examine as its face. What is the source of these
60,000 francs? And where would they have gone if a legislative vote
13
30. had not first directed them to the rue de Rivoli and from there to
the rue de Grenelle? That is what is not seen.
Surely, no one will dare maintain that the legislative vote has
caused this sum to hatch out from the ballot box; that it is a pure
addition to the national wealth; that, without this miraculous
vote, these sixty thousand francs would have remained invisible
and impalpable. It must be admitted that all that the majority can
do is to decide that they will be taken from somewhere to be sent
somewhere else, and that they will have one destination only by
being deflected from another.
This being the case, it is clear that the taxpayer who will have
been taxed one franc will no longer have this franc at his disposal.
It is clear that he will be deprived of a satisfaction to the tune of
one franc, and that the worker, whoever he is, who would have
procured this satisfaction for him, will be deprived of wages in
the same amount.
Let us not, then, yield to the childish illusion of believing that
the vote of May 16 adds anything whatever to national well-being
and employment. It reallocates possessions, it reallocates wages,
and that is all.
Will it be said that for one kind of satisfaction and for one kind
of job it substitutes satisfactions and jobs more urgent, more moral,
more rational? I could do battle on this ground. I could say: In
taking sixty thousand francs from the taxpayers, you reduce the
wages of plowmen, ditchdiggers, carpenters, and blacksmiths, and
you increase by the same amount the wages of singers, hairdressers,
decorators, and costumers. Nothing proves that this latter class is
more important than the other. M. de Lamartine does not make
this allegation. He says himself that the work of the theaters is
just as productive as, just as fruitful as, and not more so than, any
other work, which might still be contested; for the best proof that
theatrical work is not as productive as other work is that the latter
is called upon to subsidize the former.
But this comparison of the intrinsic value and merit of the different kinds of work forms no part of my present subject. All that
I have to do here is to show that, if M. de Lamartine and those
who have applauded his argument have seen on the one hand the
wages earned by those who supply the needs of the actors, they
14
31. should see on the other the earnings lost by those who supply the
needs of the taxpayers; if they do not, they are open to ridicule
for mistaking a reallocation for a gain. If they were logical in
their doctrine, they would ask for infinite subsidies; for what is
true of one franc and of sixty thousand francs is true, in identical
circumstances, of a billion francs.
When it is a question of taxes, gentlemen, prove their usefulness
by reasons with some foundation, but not with that lamentable
assertion: “Public spending keeps the working class alive.” It makes
the mistake of covering up a fact that it is essential to know: namely,
that public spending is always a substitute for private spending,
and that consequently it may well support one worker in place of
another but adds nothing to the lot of the working class taken as
a whole. Your argument is fashionable, but it is quite absurd, for
the reasoning is not correct.
5. Public Works
Nothing is more natural than that a nation, after making sure that
a great enterprise will profit the community, should have such
an enterprise carried out with funds collected from the citizenry.
But I lose patience completely, I confess, when I hear alleged in
support of such a resolution this economic fallacy: “Besides, it is
a way of creating jobs for the workers.”
The state opens a road, builds a palace, repairs a street, digs a
canal; with these projects it gives jobs to certain workers. That is
what is seen. But it deprives certain other laborers of employment.
That is what is not seen.
Suppose a road is under construction. A thousand laborers
arrive every morning, go home every evening, and receive their
wages; that is certain. If the road had not been authorized, if funds
for it had not been voted, these good people would have neither
found this work nor earned these wages; that again is certain.
But is this all? Taken all together, does not the operation involve
something else? At the moment when M. Dupin pronounces the
sacramental words: “The Assembly has adopted . . .” do millions
of francs descend miraculously on a moonbeam into the coffers
of M. Fould and M. Bineau? For the process to be complete, does
15
32. not the state have to organize the collection of funds as well as
their expenditure? Does it not have to get its tax collectors into
the country and its taxpayers to make their contribution?
Study the question, then, from its two aspects. In noting what
the state is going to do with the millions of francs voted, do not
neglect to note also what the taxpayers would have done—and
can no longer do—with these same millions. You see, then, that
a public enterprise is a coin with two sides. On one, the figure
of a busy worker, with this device: What is seen; on the other, an
unemployed worker, with this device: What is not seen.
The sophism that I am attacking in this essay is all the more dangerous when applied to public works, since it serves to justify the
most foolishly prodigal enterprises. When a railroad or a bridge
has real utility, it suffices to rely on this fact in arguing in its favor.
But if one cannot do this, what does one do? One has recourse
to this mumbo jumbo: “We must create jobs for the workers.”
This means that the terraces of the Champ-de-Mars are ordered
first to be built up and then to be torn down. The great Napoleon,
it is said, thought he was doing philanthropic work when he had
ditches dug and then filled in. He also said: “What difference
does the result make? All we need is to see wealth spread among
the laboring classes.”
Let us get to the bottom of things. Money creates an illusion
for us. To ask for cooperation, in the form of money, from all the
citizens in a common enterprise is, in reality, to ask of them actual
physical co-operation, for each one of them procures for himself
by his labor the amount he is taxed. Now, if we were to gather together all the citizens and exact their services from them in order
to have a piece of work performed that is useful to all, this would
be understandable; their recompense would consist in the results
of the work itself. But if, after being brought together, they were
forced to build roads on which no one would travel, or palaces that
no one would live in, all under the pretext of providing work for
them, it would seem absurd, and they would certainly be justified
in objecting: We will have none of that kind of work. We would
rather work for ourselves.
Having the citizens contribute money, and not labor, changes
nothing in the general results. But if labor were contributed, the
16
33. loss would be shared by everyone. Where money is contributed,
those whom the state keeps busy escape their share of the loss,
while adding much more to that which their compatriots already
have to suffer.
There is an article in the Constitution which states:
“Society assists and encourages the development of labor . . .
through the establishment by the state, the departments, and the
municipalities, of appropriate public works to employ idle hands.”
As a temporary measure in a time of crisis, during a severe
winter, this intervention on the part of the taxpayer could have
good effects. It acts in the same way as insurance. It adds nothing
to the number of jobs nor to total wages, but it takes labor and
wages from ordinary times and doles them out, at a loss it is true,
in difficult times.
As a permanent, general, systematic measure, it is nothing but
a ruinous hoax, an impossibility, a contradiction, which makes a
great show of the little work that it has stimulated, which is what
is seen, and conceals the much larger amount of work that it has
precluded, which is what is not seen.
6. Middlemen
Society is the aggregate of all the services that men perform for
one another by compulsion or voluntarily, that is to say, public
services and private services.
The first, imposed and regulated by the law, which is not always
easy to change when necessary, can long outlive their usefulness
and still retain the name of public services, even when they are
no longer anything but public nuisances. The second are in the
domain of the voluntary, i.e., of individual responsibility. Each
gives and receives what he wishes, or what he can, after bargaining.
These services are always presumed to have a real utility, exactly
measured by their comparative value.
That is why the former are so often static, while the latter obey
the law of progress.
While the exaggerated development of public services, with
the waste of energies that it entails, tends to create a disastrous
parasitism in society, it is rather strange that many modern schools
17
34. of economic thought, attributing this characteristic to voluntary,
private services, seek to transform the functions performed by the
various occupations.
These schools of thought are vehement in their attack on those
they call middlemen. They would willingly eliminate the capitalist,
the banker, the speculator, the entrepreneur, the businessman, and
the merchant, accusing them of interposing themselves between
producer and consumer in order to fleece them both, without
giving them anything of value. Or rather, the reformers would
like to transfer to the state the work of the middlemen, for this
work cannot be eliminated.
The sophism of the socialists on this point consists in showing
the public what it pays to the middlemen for their services and in
concealing what would have to be paid to the state. Once again we
have the conflict between what strikes the eye and what is evidenced
only to the mind, between what is seen and what is not seen.
It was especially in 1847 and on the occasion of the famine that
the socialist schools succeeded in popularizing their disastrous
theory. They knew well that the most absurd propaganda always
has some chance with men who are suffering; malesuada fames.
Then, with the aid of those high-sounding words: Exploitation
of man by man, speculation in hunger, monopoly, they set themselves
to blackening the name of business and throwing a veil over its
benefits.
“Why,” they said, “leave to merchants the task of getting foodstuffs from the United States and the Crimea? Why cannot the
state, the departments, and the municipalities organize a provisioning service and set up warehouses for stockpiling? They would
sell at net cost, and the people, the poor people, would be relieved
of the tribute that they pay to free—i.e., selfish, individualistic,
anarchical—trade.”
The tribute that the people pay to business, is what is seen. The
tribute that the people would have to pay to the state or to its
agents in the socialist system, is what is not seen.
What is this so-called tribute that people pay to business? It
is this: that two men render each other a service in full freedom
under the pressure of competition and at a price agreed on after
bargaining.
18
35. When the stomach that is hungry is in Paris and the wheat that
can satisfy it is in Odessa, the suffering will not cease until the
wheat reaches the stomach. There are three ways to accomplish
this: the hungry men can go themselves to find the wheat; they
can put their trust in those who engage in this kind of business;
or they can levy an assessment on themselves and charge public
officials with the task.
Of these three methods, which is the most advantageous?
In all times, in all countries, the freer, the more enlightened, the
more experienced men have been, the oftener have they voluntarily
chosen the second. I confess that this is enough in my eyes to give
the advantage to it. My mind refuses to admit that mankind at
large deceives itself on a point that touches it so closely.
However, let us examine the question.
For thirty-six million citizens to depart for Odessa to get the
wheat that they need is obviously impracticable. The first means
is of no avail. The consumers cannot act by themselves; they are
compelled to turn to middlemen, whether public officials or
merchants.
However, let us observe that the first means would be the
most natural. Fundamentally, it is the responsibility of whoever
is hungry to get his own wheat. It is a task that concerns him; it is
a service that he owes to himself. If someone else, whoever he may
be, performs this service for him and takes the task on himself, this
other person has a right to compensation. What I am saying here
is that the services of middlemen involve a right to remuneration.
However that may be, since we must turn to what the socialists call a parasite, which of the two—the merchant or the public
official—is the less demanding parasite?
Business (I assume it to be free, or else what point would there
be in my argument?) is forced, by its own self-interest, to study
the seasons, to ascertain day by day the condition of the crops, to
receive reports from all parts of the world, to foresee needs, to
take precautions. It has ships all ready, associates everywhere, and
its immediate self-interest is to buy at the lowest possible price,
to economize on all details of operation, and to attain the greatest results with the least effort. Not only French merchants, but
merchants the whole world over are busy with provisioning France
19
36. for the day of need, and if self-interest compels them to fulfill their
task at the least expense, competition among them no less compels
them to let the consumers profit from all the economies realized.
Once the wheat has arrived, the businessman has an interest in
selling it as soon as possible to cover his risks, realize his profits,
and begin all over again, if there is an opportunity. Guided by
the comparison of prices, private enterprise distributes food all
over the world, always beginning at the point of greatest scarcity,
that is, where the need is felt the most. It is thus impossible to
imagine an organization better calculated to serve the interests
of the hungry, and the beauty of this organization, not perceived
by the socialists, comes precisely from the fact that it is free, i.e.,
voluntary. True, the consumer must pay the businessman for his
expenses of cartage, of transshipment, of storage, of commissions,
etc., but under what system does the one who consumes the wheat
avoid paying the expenses of shipping it to him? There is, besides,
the necessity of paying also for service rendered, but, so far as the
share of the middleman is concerned, it is reduced to a minimum
by competition; and as to its justice, it would be strange for the
artisans of Paris not to work for the merchants of Marseilles, when
the merchants of Marseilles work for the artisans of Paris.
If, according to the socialist plan, the state takes the place of
private businessmen in these transactions, what will happen? Pray,
show me where there will be any economy for the public. Will
it be in the retail price? But imagine the representatives of forty
thousand municipalities arriving at Odessa on a given day, the day
when the wheat is needed; imagine the effect on the price. Will
the economy be effected in the shipping expenses? But will fewer
ships, fewer sailors, fewer trans-shipments, fewer warehouses be
needed, or are we to be relieved of the necessity for paying for
all these things? Will the saving be effected in the profits of the
businessmen? But did your representatives and public officials go
to Odessa for nothing? Are they going to make the journey out
of brotherly love? Will they not have to live? Will not their time
have to be paid for? And do you think that this will not exceed a
thousand times the two or three percent that the merchant earns,
a rate that he is prepared to guarantee?
And then, think of the difficulty of levying so many taxes
20
37. to distribute so much food. Think of the injustices and abuses
inseparable from such an enterprise. Think of the burden of responsibility that the government would have to bear.
The socialists who have invented these follies, and who in days
of distress plant them in the minds of the masses, generously confer
on themselves the title of “forward-looking” men, and there is a
real danger that usage, that tyrant of language, will ratify both the
word and the judgment it implies. “Forward-looking” assumes
that these gentlemen can see ahead much further than ordinary
people; that their only fault is to be too much in advance of their
century; and that, if the time has not yet arrived when certain
private services, allegedly parasitical, can be eliminated, the fault
is with the public, which is far behind socialism. To my mind and
knowledge, it is the contrary that is true, and I do not know to
what barbaric century we should have to return to find on this
point a level of understanding comparable to that of the socialists.
The modern socialist factions ceaselessly oppose free association
in present-day society. They do not realize that a free society is a
true association much superior to any of those that they concoct
out of their fertile imaginations.
Let us elucidate this point with an example:
For a man, when he gets up in the morning, to be able to put on
a suit of clothes, a piece of land has had to be enclosed, fertilized,
drained, cultivated, planted with a certain kind of vegetation;
flocks of sheep have had to feed on it; they have had to give their
wool; this wool has had to be spun, woven, dyed, and converted
into cloth; this cloth has had to be cut, sewn, and fashioned into
a garment. And this series of operations implies a host of others;
for it presupposes the use of farming implements, of sheepfolds,
of factories, of coal, of machines, of carriages, etc.
If society were not a very real association, anyone who wanted
a suit of clothes would be reduced to working in isolation, that is,
to performing himself the innumerable operations in this series,
from the first blow of the pickaxe that initiates it right down to
the last thrust of the needle that terminates it.
But thanks to that readiness to associate which is the distinctive
characteristic of our species, these operations have been distributed among a multitude of workers, and they keep subdividing
21
38. themselves more and more for the common good to the point
where, as consumption increases, a single specialized operation
can support a new industry. Then comes the distribution of the
proceeds, according to the portion of value each one has contributed to the total work. If this is not association, I should like to
know what is.
Note that, since not one of the workers has produced the
smallest particle of raw material from nothing, they are confined
to rendering each other mutual services, to aiding each other for
a common end; and that all can be considered, each group in
relation to the others, as middlemen. If, for example, in the course
of the operation, transportation becomes important enough to
employ one person; spinning, a second; weaving, a third; why
should the first one be considered more of a parasite than the
others? Is there no need for transportation? Does not someone
devote time and trouble to the task? Does he not spare his associates this time and trouble? Are they doing more than he, or just
something different? Are they not all equally subject, in regard
to their pay, that is, their share of the proceeds, to the law that
restricts it to the price agreed upon after bargaining? Do not this
division of labor and these arrangements, decided upon in full
liberty, serve the common good? Do we, then, need a socialist,
under the pretext of planning, to come and despotically destroy
our voluntary arrangements, put an end to the division of labor,
substitute isolated efforts for cooperative efforts, and reverse the
progress of civilization?
Is association as I describe it here any the less association because
everyone enters and leaves it voluntarily, chooses his place in it,
judges and bargains for himself, under his own responsibility, and
brings to it the force and the assurance of his own self-interest? For
association to deserve the name, does a so-called reformer have to
come and impose his formula and his will on us and concentrate
within himself, so to speak, all of mankind?
The more one examines these “forward-looking” schools of
thought, the more one is convinced that at bottom they rest on
nothing but ignorance proclaiming itself infallible and demanding
despotic power in the name of this infallibility.
I hope that the reader will excuse this digression. It is perhaps
22
39. not entirely useless at the moment when, coming straight from the
books of the Saint-Simonians, of the advocates of phalansteries,
and of the admirers of Icaria, tirades against the middlemen fill
the press and the Assembly and seriously menace the freedom of
labor and exchange.
7. Restraint of Trade
Mr. Protectionist (it was not I who gave him that name; it was M.
Charles Dupin) devoted his time and his capital to converting ore
from his lands into iron. Since Nature had been more generous
with the Belgians, they sold iron to the French at a better price
than Mr. Protectionist did, which meant that all Frenchmen, or
France, could obtain a given quantity of iron with less labor by
buying it from the good people of Flanders. Therefore, prompted
by their self-interest, they took full advantage of the situation, and
every day a multitude of nailmakers, metalworkers, cartwrights,
mechanics, blacksmiths, and plowmen could be seen either going themselves or sending middlemen to Belgium to obtain their
supply of iron. Mr. Protectionist did not like this at all.
His first idea was to stop this abuse by direct intervention with
his own two hands. This was certainly the least he could do, since
he alone was harmed. I’ll take my carbine, he said to himself. I’ll
put four pistols in my belt, I’ll fill my cartridge box, I’ll buckle on
my sword, and, thus equipped, I’ll go to the frontier. There I’ll
kill the first metalworker, nailmaker, blacksmith, mechanic, or
locksmith who comes seeking his own profit rather than mine.
That’ll teach him a lesson!
At the moment of leaving, Mr. Protectionist had a few second
thoughts that somewhat tempered his bellicose ardor. He said to
himself: First of all, it is quite possible that the buyers of iron, my
fellow countrymen and my enemies, will take offense, and, instead
of letting themselves be killed, they might kill me. Furthermore,
even if all my servants marched out, we could not guard the whole
frontier. Finally, the entire proceeding would cost me too much,
more than the result would be worth.
Mr. Protectionist was going to resign himself sadly just to being
free like everyone else, when suddenly he had a brilliant idea.
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40. He remembered that there is a great law factory in Paris. What
is a law? he asked himself. It is a measure to which, when once
promulgated, whether it is good or bad, everyone has to conform.
For the execution of this law, a public police force is organized,
and to make up the said public police force, men and money are
taken from the nation.
If, then, I manage to get from that great Parisian factory a nice
little law saying: “Belgian iron is prohibited,” I shall attain the
following results: The government will replace the few servants
that I wanted to send to the frontier with twenty thousand sons of
my recalcitrant metalworkers, locksmiths, nailmakers, blacksmiths,
artisans, mechanics, and plowmen. Then, to keep these twenty
thousand customs officers in good spirits and health, there will be
distributed to them twenty-five million francs taken from these
same blacksmiths, nailmakers, artisans, and plowmen. Organized
in this way, the protection will be better accomplished; it will cost
me nothing; I shall not be exposed to the brutality of brokers; I
shall sell the iron at my price; and I shall enjoy the sweet pleasure
of seeing our great people shamefully hoaxed. That will teach them
to be continually proclaiming themselves the precursors and the
promoters of all progress in Europe. It will be a smart move, and
well worth the trouble of trying!
So Mr. Protectionist went to the law factory. (Another time,
perhaps, I shall tell the story of his dark, underhanded dealings
there; today I wish to speak only of the steps he took openly and
for all to see.) He presented to their excellencies, the legislators,
the following argument:
“Belgian iron is sold in France at ten francs, which forces
me to sell mine at the same price. I should prefer to sell it at
fifteen and cannot because of this confounded Belgian iron.
Manufacture a law that says: ‘Belgian iron shall no longer enter
France.’ Immediately I shall raise my price by five francs, with the
following consequences:
“For each hundred kilograms of iron that I shall deliver to the
public, instead of ten francs I shall get fifteen; I shall enrich myself
more quickly; I shall extend the exploitation of my mines; I shall
employ more men. My employees and I will spend more, to the
great advantage of our suppliers for miles around. These suppliers,
24
41. having a greater market, will give more orders to industry, and
gradually this activity will spread throughout the country. This
lucky hundred-sou piece that you will drop into my coffers, like
a stone that is thrown into a lake, will cause an infinite number of
concentric circles to radiate great distances in every direction.”
Charmed by this discourse, enchanted to learn that it is so
easy to increase the wealth of a people simply by legislation, the
manufacturers of laws voted in favor of the restriction. “What is
all this talk about labor and saving?” they said. “What good are
these painful means of increasing the national wealth, when a
decree will do the job?”
And, in fact, the law had all the consequences predicted by Mr.
Protectionist, but it had others too; for, to do him justice, he had
not reasoned falsely, but incompletely. In asking for a privilege, he
had pointed out the effects that are seen, leaving in the shadow
those that are not seen. He had shown only two people, when
actually there are three in the picture. It is for us to repair this
omission, whether involuntary or premeditated.
Yes, the five-franc piece thus legislatively rechanneled into the
coffers of Mr. Protectionist constitutes an advantage for him and
for those who get jobs because of it. And if the decree had made
the five-franc piece come down from the moon, these good effects
would not be counterbalanced by any compensating bad effects.
Unfortunately, the mysterious hundred sous did not come down
from the moon, but rather from the pocket of a metalworker, a nailmaker, a cartwright, a blacksmith, a plowman, a builder, in a word,
from James Goodfellow, who pays it out today without receiving
a milligram of iron more than when he was paying ten francs. It at
once becomes evident that this certainly changes the question, for,
quite obviously, the profit of Mr. Protectionist is counterbalanced by
the loss of James Goodfellow, and anything that Mr. Protectionist
will be able to do with this five-franc piece for the encouragement
of domestic industry, James Goodfellow could also have done. The
stone is thrown in at one point in the lake only because it has been
prohibited by law from being thrown in at another.
Hence, what is not seen counterbalances what is seen; and the
outcome of the whole operation is an injustice, all the more deplorable in having been perpetrated by the law.
25
42. But this is not all. I have said that a third person was always left
in the shadow. I must make him appear here, so that he can reveal
to us a second loss of five francs. Then we shall have the results of
the operation in its entirety.
James Goodfellow has fifteen francs, the fruit of his labors. (We
are back at the time when he is still free.) What does he do with his
fifteen francs? He buys an article of millinery for ten francs, and it
is with this article of millinery that he pays (or his middleman pays
for him) for the hundred kilograms of Belgian iron. He still has five
francs left. He does not throw them into the river, but (and this is
what is not seen) he gives them to some manufacturer or other in
exchange for some satisfaction—for example, to a publisher for a
copy of the Discourse on Universal History by Bossuet.
Thus, he has encouraged domestic industry to the amount of
fifteen francs, to wit:
10 francs to the Parisian milliner
5 francs to the publisher
And as for James Goodfellow, he gets for his fifteen francs two
objects of satisfaction, to wit:
1. A hundred kilograms of iron
2. A book
Comes the decree.
What happens to James Goodfellow? What happens to domestic industry?
James Goodfellow, in giving his fifteen francs to the last centime
to Mr. Protectionist for a hundred kilograms of iron, has nothing
now but the use of this iron. He loses the enjoyment of a book or
of any other equivalent object. He loses five francs. You agree with
this; you cannot fail to agree; you cannot fail to agree that when
restraint of trade raises prices, the consumer loses the difference.
But it is said that domestic industry gains the difference.
No, it does not gain it; for, since the decree, it is encouraged
only as much as it was before, to the amount of fifteen francs.
26
43. Only, since the decree, the fifteen francs of James Goodfellow go
to metallurgy, while before the decree they were divided between
millinery and publishing.
The force that Mr. Protectionist might exercise by himself at
the frontier and that which he has the law exercise for him can be
judged quite differently from the moral point of view. There are
people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as
it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming
situation. However that may be, one thing is certain, and that is
that the economic results are the same.
You may look at the question from any point of view you like,
but if you examine it dispassionately, you will see that no good
can come from legal or illegal plunder. We do not deny that it
may bring for Mr. Protectionist or his industry, or if you wish
for domestic industry, a profit of five francs. But we affirm that it
will also give rise to two losses: one for James Goodfellow, who
pays fifteen francs for what he used to get for ten, the other for
domestic industry, which no longer receives the difference. Make
your own choice of which of these two losses compensates for the
profit that we admit. The one you do not choose constitutes no
less a dead loss.
Moral: To use force is not to produce, but to destroy. Heavens!
If to use force were to produce, France would be much richer
than she is.
8. Machines
“A curse on machines! Every year their increasing power condemns
to pauperism millions of workers, taking their jobs away from
them, and with their jobs their wages, and with their wages their
bread! A curse on machines!”
That is the cry rising from ignorant prejudice, and whose echo
resounds in the newspapers.
But to curse machines is to curse the human mind!
What puzzles me is that it is possible to find anyone at all who
can be content with such a doctrine.
For, in the last analysis, if it is true, what is its strictly logical
consequence? It is that activity, well-being, wealth, and happiness
27
44. are possible only for stupid nations, mentally static, to whom God
has not given the disastrous gift of thinking, observing, contriving,
inventing, obtaining the greatest results with the least trouble.
On the contrary, rags, miserable huts, poverty, and stagnation are
the inevitable portion of every nation that looks for and finds in
iron, fire, wind, electricity, magnetism, the laws of chemistry and
mechanics—in a word, in the forces of Nature—an addition to its
own resources, and it is indeed appropriate to say with Rousseau:
“Every man who thinks is a depraved animal.”
But this is not all. If this doctrine is true, and as all men think
and invent—as all, in fact, from first to last, and at every minute of
their existence, seek to make the forces of Nature cooperate with
them, to do more with less, to reduce their own manual labor or
that of those whom they pay, to attain the greatest possible sum
of satisfactions with the least possible amount of work—we must
conclude that all mankind is on the way to decadence, precisely
because of this intelligent aspiration toward progress that seems
to torment every one of its members.
Hence, it would have to be established statistically that the
inhabitants of Lancaster, fleeing that machine-ridden country,
go in search of employment to Ireland, where machines are unknown; and, historically, that the shadow of barbarism darkens
the epochs of civilization, and that civilization flourishes in times
of ignorance and barbarism.
Evidently there is in this mass of contradictions something that
shocks us and warns us that the problem conceals an element essential to its solution that has not been sufficiently brought to light.
The whole mystery consists in this: Behind what is seen lies
what is not seen. I am going to try to shed some light on it. My
demonstration can be nothing but a repetition of the preceding
one, for the problem is the same.
Men have a natural inclination, if they are not prevented by
force, to go for a bargain—that is, for something that, for an
equivalent satisfaction, spares them labor—whether this bargain
comes to them from a capable foreign producer or from a capable
mechanical producer.
The theoretical objection that is raised against this inclination
is the same in both cases. In one as in the other, the reproach is
28
45. made that it apparently makes for a scarcity of jobs. However, its
actual effect is not to make jobs scarce, but to free men’s labor for
other jobs.
And that is why, in practice, the same obstacle—force—is set up
against it in both cases. The legislator prohibits foreign competition and forbids mechanical competition. For what other means
can there be to stifle an inclination natural to all men than to take
away their freedom?
In many countries, it is true, the legislator strikes at only one
of these types of competition and confines himself to grumbling
about the other. This proves only that in these countries the
legislator is inconsistent.
That should not surprise us. On a false path there is always
inconsistency; if this were not so, mankind would be destroyed.
We have never seen and never shall see a false principle carried
out completely. I have said elsewhere: Absurdity is the limit of
inconsistency. I should like to add: It is also its proof.
Let us go on with our demonstration; it will not be lengthy.
James Goodfellow had two francs that he let two workers earn.
But now suppose that he devises an arrangement of ropes and
weights that will shorten the work by half.
Then he obtains the same satisfaction, saves a franc, and discharges a worker.
He discharges a worker: that is what is seen.
Seeing only this, people say: “See how misery follows civilization! See how freedom is fatal to equality! The human mind has
made a conquest, and immediately another worker has forever
fallen into the abyss of poverty. Perhaps James Goodfellow can still
continue to have both men work for him, but he cannot give them
more than ten sous each, for they will compete with one another
and will offer their services at a lower rate. This is how the rich
get richer and the poor become poorer. We must remake society.”
A fine conclusion, and one worthy of the initial premise!
Fortunately, both premise and conclusion are false, because
behind the half of the phenomenon that is seen is the other half
that is not seen.
The franc saved by James Goodfellow and the necessary effects
of this saving are not seen.
29
46. Since, as a result of his own invention, James Goodfellow no
longer spends more than one franc for manual labor in the pursuit
of a given satisfaction, he has another franc left over.
If, then, there is somewhere an idle worker who offers his labor
on the market, there is also somewhere a capitalist who offers his
idle franc. These two elements meet and combine.
And it is clear as day that between the supply of and the demand
for labor, between the supply of and the demand for wages, the
relationship has in no way changed.
The invention and the worker, paid with the first franc, now do
the work previously accomplished by two workers.
The second worker, paid with the second franc, performs some
new work.
What has then been changed in the world? There is one national
satisfaction the more; in other words, the invention is a gratuitous
conquest, a gratuitous profit for mankind.
From the form in which I have given my demonstration we
could draw this conclusion:
“It is the capitalist who derives all the benefits flowing from
the invention of machines. The laboring class, even though it suffers from them only temporarily, never profits from them, since,
according to what you yourself say, they reallocate a portion of
the nation’s industry without diminishing it, it is true, but also
without increasing it.”
It is not within the province of this essay to answer all objections.
Its only object is to combat an ignorant prejudice, very dangerous
and extremely widespread. I wished to prove that a new machine,
in making a certain number of workers available for jobs, necessarily makes available at the same time the money that pays them.
These workers and this money get together eventually to produce
something that was impossible to produce before the invention;
from which it follows that the final result of the invention is an
increase in satisfactions with the same amount of labor.
Who reaps this excess of satisfactions?
Yes, at first it is the capitalist, the inventor, the first one who uses
the machine successfully, and this is the reward for his genius and
daring. In this case, as we have just seen, he realizes a saving on
the costs of production, which, no matter how it is spent (and it
30
47. always is), gives employment to just as many hands as the machine
has made idle.
But soon competition forces him to lower his selling price by
the amount of this saving itself.
And then it is no longer the inventor who reaps the benefits of
the invention; it is the buyer of the product, the consumer, the
public, including the workers—in a word, it is mankind.
And what is not seen is that the saving, thus procured for all the
consumers, forms a fund from which wages can be drawn, replacing what the machine has drained off.
Thus (taking up again the foregoing example), James Goodfellow
obtains a product by spending two francs for wages.
Thanks to his invention, the manual labor now costs him only
one franc.
As long as he sells the product at the same price, there is one
worker the fewer employed in making this special product: that
is what is seen; but there is one worker the more employed by the
franc James Goodfellow has saved: that is what is not seen.
When, in the natural course of events, James Goodfellow is
reduced to lowering by one franc the price of the product, he
no longer realizes a saving; then he no longer releases a franc for
national employment in new production. But whoever acquires
it, i.e., mankind, takes his place. Whoever buys the product pays
one franc less, saves a franc, and necessarily hands over this saving
to the fund for wages; this is again what is not seen.
Another solution to this problem, one founded on the facts,
has been advanced.
Some have said: “The machine reduces the expenses of production and lowers the price of the product. The lowering of the
price stimulates an increase in consumption, which necessitates
an increase in production, and, finally, the use of as many workers
as before the invention—or more.” In support of this argument
they cite printing, spinning, the press, etc.
This demonstration is not scientific.
We should have to conclude from it that, if the consumption
of the special product in question remains stationary or nearly
so, the machine will be harmful to employment. This is not so.
Suppose that in a certain country all the men wear hats. If with
31
48. a machine the price of hats can be reduced by half, it does not
necessarily follow that twice as many hats will be bought.
Will it be said, in that case, that a part of the national labor
force has been made idle? Yes, according to ignorant reasoning.
No, according to mine; for, even though in that country no one
were to buy a single extra hat, the entire fund for wages would
nevertheless remain intact; whatever did not go to the hat industry
would be found in the saving realized by all consumers and would
go to pay wages for the whole of the labor force that the machine
had rendered unnecessary and to stimulate a new development
of all industries.
And this is, in fact, the way things happen. I have seen newspapers at 80 francs; now they sell for 48. This is a saving of 32 francs
for the subscribers. It is not certain, at least it is not inevitable, that
the 32 francs continue to go into journalism; but what is certain,
what is inevitable, is that if they do not take this direction, they
will take another. One franc will be used to buy more newspapers,
another for more food, a third for better clothes, a fourth for
better furniture.
Thus, all industries are interrelated. They form a vast network in
which all the lines communicate by secret channels. What is saved in
one profits all. What is important is to understand clearly that never,
never are economies effected at the expense of jobs and wages.
9. Credit
At all times, but especially in the last few years, people have dreamt
of universalizing wealth by universalizing credit.
I am sure I do not exaggerate in saying that since the February
Revolution, the Paris presses have spewed forth more than ten
thousand brochures extolling this solution of the social problem.
This solution, alas, has as its foundation merely an optical illusion, insofar as an illusion can serve as a foundation for anything.
These people begin by confusing hard money with products;
then they confuse paper money with hard money; and it is from
these two confusions that they profess to derive a fact.
In this question it is absolutely necessary to forget money,
coins, bank notes, and the other media by which products pass
32
49. from hand to hand, in order to see only the products themselves,
which constitute the real substance of a loan.
For when a farmer borrows fifty francs to buy a plow, it is not
actually the fifty francs that is lent to him; it is the plow.
And when a merchant borrows twenty thousand francs to
buy a house, it is not the twenty thousand francs he owes; it is
the house.
Money makes its appearance only to facilitate the arrangement
among several parties.
Peter may not be disposed to lend his plow, but James may
be willing to lend his money. What does William do then? He
borrows the money from James, and with this money he buys the
plow from Peter.
But actually nobody borrows money for the sake of the money
itself. We borrow money to get products.
Now, in no country is it possible to transfer from one hand to
another more products than there are.
Whatever the sum of hard money and bills that circulates, the
borrowers taken together cannot get more plows, houses, tools,
provisions, or raw materials than the total number of lenders can
furnish.
For let us keep well in mind that every borrower presupposes
a lender, that every borrowing implies a loan.
This much being granted, what good can credit institutions
do? They can make it easier for borrowers and lenders to find
one another and reach an understanding. But what they cannot
do is to increase instantaneously the total number of objects borrowed and lent.
However, the credit organizations would have to do just this
in order for the end of the social reformers to be attained, since
these gentlemen aspire to nothing less than to give plows, houses,
tools, provisions, and raw materials to everyone who wants them.
And how do they imagine they will do this?
By giving to loans the guarantee of the state.
Let us go more deeply into the matter, for there is something here
that is seen and something that is not seen. Let us try to see both.
Suppose that there is only one plow in the world and that two
farmers want it.
33
50. Peter is the owner of the only plow available in France. John
and James wish to borrow it. John, with his honesty, his property,
and his good name, offers guarantees. One believes in him; he has
credit. James does not inspire confidence or at any rate seems less
reliable. Naturally, Peter lends his plow to John.
But now, under socialist inspiration, the state intervenes and
says to Peter: “Lend your plow to James. We will guarantee you
reimbursement, and this guarantee is worth more than John’s, for he
is the only one responsible for himself, and we, though it is true we
have nothing, dispose of the wealth of all the taxpayers; if necessary,
we will pay back the principal and the interest with their money.”
So Peter lends his plow to James; this is what is seen.
And the socialists congratulate themselves, saying, “See how our
plan has succeeded. Thanks to the intervention of the state, poor
James has a plow. He no longer has to spade by hand; he is on the
way to making his fortune. It is a benefit for him and a profit for
the nation as a whole.”
Oh no, gentlemen, it is not a profit for the nation, for here is
what is not seen.
It is not seen that the plow goes to James because it did not go
to John.
It is not seen that if James pushes a plow instead of spading, John
will be reduced to spading instead of plowing.
Consequently, what one would like to think of as an additional
loan is only the reallocation of a loan.
Furthermore, it is not seen that this reallocation involves two
profound injustices: injustice to John, who, after having merited
and won credit by his honesty and his energy, sees himself deprived;
injustice to the taxpayers, obligated to pay a debt that does not
concern them.
Will it be said that the government offers to John the same
opportunities it does to James? But since there is only one plow
available, two cannot be lent. The argument always comes back to
the statement that, thanks to the intervention of the state, more
will be borrowed than can be lent, for the plow represents here
the total of available capital.
True, I have reduced the operation to its simplest terms; but test
by the same touchstone the most complicated governmental credit
34
51. institutions, and you will be convinced that they can have but one
result: to reallocate credit, not to increase it. In a given country
and at a given time, there is only a certain sum of available capital,
and it is all placed somewhere. By guaranteeing insolvent debtors,
the state can certainly increase the number of borrowers, raise the
rate of interest (all at the expense of the taxpayer), but it cannot
increase the number of lenders and the total value of the loans.
Do not impute to me, however, a conclusion from which I beg
Heaven to preserve me. I say that the law should not artificially
encourage borrowing; but I do not say that it should hinder it
artificially. If in our hypothetical system or elsewhere there should
be obstacles to the diffusion and application of credit, let the law
remove them; nothing could be better or more just. But that,
along with liberty, is all that social reformers worthy of the name
should ask of the law.
10. Algeria
Four orators are all trying to be heard in the Assembly. At first
they speak all at once, then one after the other. What have they
said? Very beautiful things, surely, about the power and grandeur
of France, the necessity of sowing in order to reap, the brilliant
future of our vast colony, the advantage of redistributing our
surplus population, etc., etc.; masterpieces of eloquence, always
ornamented with this conclusion:
“Vote fifty million francs (more or less) to build ports and roads
in Algeria so that we can transport colonists there, build houses
for them, and clear fields for them. If you do this, you will have
lifted a burden from the shoulders of the French worker, encouraged employment in Africa, and increased trade in Marseilles. It
would be all profit.”
Yes, that is true, if we consider the said fifty million francs only
from the moment when the state spends them, if we look at where
they go, and not whence they come, if we take into account only
the good that they will do after they leave the coffers of the tax
collectors, and not the harm that has been brought about, or,
beyond that, the good that has been prevented, by causing them
to enter the government coffers in the first place. Yes, from this
35
52. limited point of view, everything is profit. The house built in
Barbary is what is seen; the port laid out in Barbary is what is seen;
the jobs created in Barbary are what is seen; a certain reduction in
the labor force in France is what is seen; great business activity in
Marseilles, still what is seen.
But there is something else that is not seen. It is that the fifty
millions spent by the state can no longer be spent as they would
have been by the taxpayers. From all the benefits attributed to
public spending we must deduct all the harm caused by preventing
private spending—at least if we are not to go so far as to say that
James Goodfellow would have done nothing with the five-franc
pieces he had fairly earned and that the tax took away from him;
an absurd assertion, for if he went to the trouble of earning them,
it was because he hoped to have the satisfaction of using them. He
would have had his garden fenced and can no longer do so; this is
what is not seen. He would have had his field marled and can no
longer do so: this is what is not seen. He would have added to his
tools and can no longer do so: this is what is not seen. He would
be better fed, better clothed; he would have had his sons better
educated; he would have increased the dowry of his daughter;
and he can no longer do so: this is what is not seen. He would have
joined a mutual-aid society and can no longer do so: this is what is
not seen. On the one hand, the satisfactions that have been taken
away from him and the means of action that have been destroyed
in his hands; on the other hand, the work of the ditchdigger, the
carpenter, the blacksmith, the tailor, and the schoolmaster of
his village which he would have encouraged and which is now
nonexistent: this is still what is not seen.
Our citizens are counting a great deal on the future prosperity
of Algeria; granted. But let them also calculate the paralysis that
in the meantime will inevitably strike France. People show me
business flourishing in Marseilles; but if it is transacted with the
product of taxation, I shall, on the other hand, point out an equal
amount of business destroyed in the rest of the country. They say:
“A colonist transported to Barbary is relief for the population that
remains in the country.” I reply: “How can that be if, in transporting this colonist to Algeria, we have also transported two or three
times the capital that would have kept him alive in France?”
36
53. The only end I have in view is to make the reader understand
that, in all public spending, behind the apparent good there is an
evil more difficult to discern. To the best of my ability, I should
like to get my reader into the habit of seeing the one and the other
and of taking account of both.
When a public expenditure is proposed, it must be examined
on its own merits, apart from its allegedly beneficial effect in
increasing the number of jobs available, for any improvement in
this direction is illusory. What public spending does in this regard,
private spending would have done to the same extent. Therefore,
the employment issue is irrelevant.
It is not within the province of this essay to evaluate the intrinsic
worth of the public expenditures devoted to Algeria.
But I cannot refrain from making one general observation. It is
that a presumption of economic benefit is never appropriate for
expenditures made by way of taxation. Why? Here is the reason.
In the first place, justice always suffers from it somewhat. Since
James Goodfellow has sweated to earn his hundred-sou piece with
some satisfaction in view, he is irritated, to say the least, that the
tax intervenes to take this satisfaction away from him and give it
to someone else. Now, certainly it is up to those who levy the tax
to give some good reasons for it. We have seen that the state gives
a detestable reason when it says: “With these hundred sous I am
going to put some men to work,” for James Goodfellow (as soon as
he has seen the light) will not fail to respond: “Good Lord! With
a hundred sous I could have put them to work myself.”
Once this argument on the part of the state has been disposed
of, the others present themselves in all their nakedness, and the
debate between the public treasury and poor James is very much
simplified. If the state says to him: “I shall take a hundred sous
from you to pay the policemen who relieve you of the necessity
for guarding your own security, to pave the street you traverse
every day, to pay the magistrate who sees to it that your property
and your liberty are respected, to feed the soldier who defends
our frontiers,” James Goodfellow will pay without saying a word,
or I am greatly mistaken. But if the state says to him: “I shall take
your hundred sous to give you one sou as a premium in case you
have cultivated your field well, or to teach your son what you do
37
